M. 37 % can’t govern his own country, as ‘The Rebellion Against the Elites’ keeps appearing every Saturday, like clockwork. While unreported in this newspaper! Here is Macron as he addresses the burning question facing the ‘West’:

“It’s an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it’s politically unsustainable too because it’s paving the way for a war of influence over vaccines,” Macron said. “You can see the Chinese strategy, and the Russian strategy too.” 

A Neo-Liberal opines on ‘inequality’-has Macron been reading his Piketty? But quickly he returns to the ‘Free Market’ mainstream with this:

The concept of intellectual property was essential for innovation, but if vaccine manufacturers were not co-operative “inevitably the political question of intellectual property will arise in all our countries,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the right debate, it’s not helpful, but it will arise — this discussion over excess profits based on scarcity of the vaccine.”

Macron offers this caveat:

“It won’t change our vaccination campaigns, but each country should set aside a small number of the doses it has to transfer tens of millions of them, but very fast, so that people on the ground see it happening.”

Macron opines that ‘it’s not a power game’. Yet he announces it as just that, under the highfalutin rubric of ‘multilateralism’.

He said the plan would be a test of the reality of multilateralism. “It’s not about vaccine diplomacy, it’s not a power game — it’s a matter of public health,” Macron said, adding that he welcomed the global provision of Russian and Chinese vaccines provided they were certified by scientists for use against the appropriate variants of the virus.

Macron rambles on, yet, as usual, he fails to makes his case of actual concern for ‘Europe’s neighbors’. The gilet noir and banlieues, the continuing demonstrations against the Security Law and the gilet jeunes. The Financial Times reader is not likely to be ‘on’ Twitter where all this ‘kind of news’ is posted regularly. A surprise? All of these manifestations ,of resistance to Macron’s Neo-Liberal Agenda, unreported in this newspaper. Sometimes ‘Newspapers’ create Political Reality: The New York Times and the ‘War in Iraq’, confected by Judy Miller and fellow travelers.With the help of political naif Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 UN speech!

Political Reporter

https://www.ft.com/content/15853717-af6c-4858-87d4-58b1826895a8

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Added February 20, 2021 :